Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways
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Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways Hyaeweol Choi Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies, 1 Published in association with University of California Press Description: This book vividly traces the genealogy of modern womanhood in the encounters between Koreans and American Protestant missionaries in the early twentieth century, during Korea’s colonization by Japan. Hyaeweol Choi shows that what it meant to be a “modern” Korean woman was deeply bound up in such diverse themes as Korean nationalism, Confucian gender practices, images of the West and Christianity, and growing desires for selfhood. Her historically specific, textured analysis sheds new light on the interplay between local and global politics of gender and modernity. Author: Hyaeweol Choi is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at Arizona State University. Review: “Pathbreaking. Approaches the transcultural and religious encounters of Korean and American women with a remarkable degree of sensitivity and nuance, as well as with judicious use of feminist and postcolonial theory. Its rich and diverse historical examples and illustrations are both engaging to read and meticulously documented.” —Namhee Lee, UCLA Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 1 8/26/2009 1:12:49 PM The Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies EDITORS: Yung Sik Kim, Seoul National University; John Lie, University of California, Berkeley ADVISORY BOARD: Eun-su Cho, Seoul National University; Carter Eckert, Harvard University; Henry Em, New York University; JaHyun Kim Haboush, Columbia University; Nam-lin Hur, University of British Columbia; Roger Janelli, Indiana University The Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies is a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley, and the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University. The series promotes the global dissemination of scholarship on Korea by publishing distinguished research on Korean history, society, art, and culture by scholars from across the world. UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 2 8/26/2009 1:12:49 PM Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea New Women, Old Ways Hyaeweol Choi Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 3 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the UC system. GAIA volumes, which are published in both print and open- access digital editions, represent the best traditions of regional studies, reconfigured through fresh global, transnational, and thematic perspectives. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Choi, Hyaeweol. Gender and mission encounters in Korea : new women, old ways / Hyaeweol Choi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn: 978-0-520-09869-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Women — Korea — History. 2. Women missionaries — Korea — History. 3. Women in missionary work — Korea — History. I. Title. HQ1765.5.C445 2009 305.43'266023730519 — dc22 2009023256 Manufactured in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 – 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 4 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM For Dan UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 5 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 6 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix A Note on Romanization and Translation xv .1 Re-Orienting Gender 1 2. Gender Equality, a New Moral Order 21 .3 The Lure and Danger of the Public Sphere 45 4. Disciplining the Modern Body and Mind 86 .5 Imagining the Other: Discursive Portraits in Missionary Fiction 121 .6 Doing It for Her Self: Sin Yosong (New Women) in Korea 145 .7 Conclusion: New Women, Old Ways 177 Abbreviations 185 Notes 187 Bibliography 247 Index 271 Eight pages of illustrations follow p. 85. UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 7 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 8 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM Preface and Acknowledgments This book started with a most serendipitous accident. While teaching at Smith College, I visited the Sophia Smith Collection, an excellent archive for women’s history on that campus. There I read some private letters writ- ten in the late nineteenth century by American women corresponding with their families from overseas. I was immediately curious about the experi- ences of those women who ventured into foreign lands more than a century ago, and I could not help but to compare the experiences they described with my own experiences as an international student in the United States in the late twentieth century. I thought my solo journey to the United States as a graduate student was quite an adventure; however, the half-day flight across the Pacific Ocean paled next to the two-month ocean voyage from San Francisco to East Asia that these women took a century ago. I knew that the first girls’ school in Korea was founded by an American mis- sionary woman. Intending to prepare a single journal article on the history of that mission school, I visited major mission archives in the United States, and I gradually came to the realization that I had just uncovered a gold mine, and a very long but enjoyable process of discovery began. The historian Martina Deuchler notes that “women do not figure prom- inently in Korean historiography past or present.” 1 Such a long “tradition” is not likely to change any time soon. Yet there have been slow but encour- aging signs of change in recent years. A growing interest in the proactive and even subversive power of women in the Confucian Choson dynasty, an attempt to bring out a more dynamic and complex picture of the New Woman [sin yosong] phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, and a rigor- ous investigation of the oppressive nature of the predominant ideologies of modernization and nationalism in shaping and understanding women’s lives signal a more comprehensive approach to history, taking gender as a ix UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 9 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM x / Preface and Acknowledgments legitimate and indeed a powerful category of analysis in comprehending history and culture. In line with these ongoing endeavors in Korean gender studies, this book adds one more critical site for investigation: the West. The image of the West, more precisely that of the United States, has been closely tied with Korea’s gendered experiences of the modern in the hierarchical world order since the late nineteenth century. To be sure, the enhanced status of South Korea in the contemporary world economy and the increasingly cosmopolitan experience of its citizens have begun to stimulate a much more complex understanding of the West. Yet the habitual perception of the West as “advanced” and “progressive,” especially in the realm of gender relations, remains unchanged. Starting with the prevailing notion in Korean historiography that American women missionaries were the pioneers who acted as catalysts for Korean modern womanhood, this book examines the genealogies of the “modern” woman among Korean intel- lectuals and American women missionaries within the context of Korea’s colonization by Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on some of the major issues of modern womanhood, such as gender equality, access to institutionalized education, participation in the public realm, and representations of gender in the print media, the book investigates the dynamic interplay between the Confucian-prescribed gender ideology of Korea, the nationalistic desires for nation-building among Korean intellec- tuals, and the Christian gender ethics of American women missionaries. The analysis emphasizes both the institutional and discursive endeavors among both Koreans and Americans in fashioning modern womanhood in accord with their own mandates — either nationalist, Christian, or secular modern. In so doing, the book sheds light on the ways in which competing narratives on modern womanhood reconfigured Confucian gender ideol- ogy for the modern era and also reveals the tensions that women experi- enced between their newly-found space for emancipation and other forms of social and political control over their bodies and subjectivities. I have been very fortunate to have many friends and colleagues who have offered invaluable comments and moral support that have helped to make what could have been an arduous task very fulfilling. When I first began this project, Donald Clark introduced me to key literature and offered con- tinual support. Namhee Lee has been unstinting with her time and thought- ful insights. She read the entire draft, providing constructive comments and warm encouragement. Discussions with Hwasook Nam, Sun Joo Kim, Seungsook Moon, Theodore Jun Yoo, and Robert Eskildsen at different UC-Choi-CS4-ToPress.indd 10 8/26/2009 1:12:50 PM Preface and Acknowledgments / xi stages of the project helped to clarify a variety of issues. Ellen Widmer and Daniel Bays graciously lent their expertise in Chinese literature and history, and Jan Bardsley shared her knowledge of Japanese New Women through cheerful e-mail messages. I am also greatly indebted to Timothy Lee, Kenneth Wells, and Sung-Deuk Oak, whose comments pointed to some of the most important conceptual and empirical issues and helped me to go deeper in my analysis.